


Where You Go, I Will Follow

by Theconsultingdetective



Series: 30 AUs [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 'black' magic, Angst, Fluff, Ghost!Dean - Freeform, M/M, Ouija, liberated youth!castiel, past major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 12:37:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2508083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theconsultingdetective/pseuds/Theconsultingdetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel moves occupied by Dean Winchester's ghost, which turns out to be the best accident he's ever made. (Ghost!au)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one contains a MCD, and a mildly alarming scene, so be warned! It all ends well, though.

          Ever since Castiel met Dean, he's come to love drafts. At first, when he took his things and settled himself down in the basement of the creaky old Winchester house, the unexplained drafts used to scare him. He filled in all the under-the-door cracks with balled up fabric and got an old-fashioned space heater with coils that burn fire-hot, but the drafts still came, as did the creaky hinges on doors he didn't touch and the smell of grease and smoke that hung heavy in the air. One day one of the floorboards caved in right as Cas walked across them. and the smell in the air intensified just as a heavy draft breezed through his mess of dark hair. Once he'd pulled his foot out and told himself that it was nothing, nothing unusual whatsoever, he investigated what was beneath it and found an old cereal box and a stack of classic rock records. He lit a couple candles (the house had it's electricity cut off a while ago, no wonder since it was empty for years, and supposedly haunted ever since the place burned down back in the late 90's) and dumped the box out onto his little cot bed, sorting through it. The draft seemed to settle, and the smoke smell turned sweet as he investigated the old box' contents. There was some old water-damaged magazine in there-'Busty Asian Beauties: Girls and Cars Edition'-and a couple Batman comics, too, and under all that, a picture of a tall, brunet boy and a shorter, blond, green eyed boy, both grinning and standing on the doorstep of that. very. house.

          "I am telling you, Gabriel, it's just some relic of the old residents," Cas dismissed, walking up the front steps of the house. Gabriel scoffed. "Yeah, the old residents, all of whom died in a huge violent house fire. And you've got all these drafts, and your whole house smells like fucking...what was it? Smoke and som'm?"   
"Grease, Gabriel," Castiel said plainly.   
"Grease. Grease. This is fucking ridiculous." Cas sighed, standing in the doorway of the darkened house.   
"Look, Gabriel, even if I was to he experiencing something 'supernatural,' I'm not going to stage a seance to contact this supposed spirit," he grumbled. Gabriel snapped his fingers.   
"Ouija board," he said, wagging his finger at Cas. "Let's get ourselves a ouija board. Catch up with the...the spirits or whatever." Cas huffed another long suffering sigh.   
"Gabriel, I have no desire to catch up with any spirits," he said, arms crossed over his chest. 

          Which is precisely how Cas and Gabriel ended up sitting around a ouija board, both their hands on the little planchette, three white candles bleeding wax onto the dark wood floors. The woman who'd sold them the board, Missouri, had given them a fair bit of sage to burn and told them where and how to sit, what to say to the spirit to get a 'line opened.'   
"Gabriel, this is absurd," Cas grumbled with a roll of his eyes.   
"Shut up, Cas," Gabriel chided. "Say what I told you to say." Cas sighed, and they started in on their trivial little chant.   
"Spirit, this is a safe place," they began, Cas with a hint of mingled fear and boredom. "Come through and communicate with us. We only want to learn from you." There was a draft, and Cas tensed. Gabriel opened one eye and slid Cas a little look of told-ya-so, to which Cas rolled his eyes exhaustedly.   
"We only want to ask you questions and put you at ease," Gabriel coaxed, and the planchette flinched.   
"Gabriel, don't-"   
"I'm not," Gabriel said, tone dead serious. Cas cleared his throat and went on in a shaky voice, as per the suggestions of the esteemed Missouri.   
"Um, can...can you tell us your name?" he managed. The planchette flinched.   
'A-L-O-N-E" Gabriel looked over at Cas, raising an eyebrow.   
"What do you mean?" Gabriel asked, but the moment he'd gotten his question out the planchette moved again.   
"J-U-S-T B-L-U-E--E-Y-E-S," the board wrote back. Gabriel looked over and shrugged.   
"Hey, if you insist," he said, and took his hands off the planchette. "I'll be outside," he said to Cas, walking out. Cas watched him go, confusion settling in the pit of his stomach.

         "Did...uh, did you put that cereal box in the floor?" Cas asked, after shaking out his hands and replacing them on the planchette. "Those records, are...are those yours?"   
"YES." Cas nodded.   
"Are you in that picture?"  
"YES." Cas nodded again.   
"Which one are you?"   
"T-H-E H-O-T O-N-E." Cas laughed under his breath, tension dissolving from his shoulders, and the air turned sweet and the breezes pleasantly warming. The planchette moved, suddenly, and Cas was startled as it blazed it's way around the board.   
"U HAVE A NICE LAUGH," the ghost spells, quick and fluidly. Cas smiles a little.   
"Thanks," he blushed, and the air smelled sweet, like cinnamon and cider.   
"NAME?" Cas smiled and nodded.   
"Castiel," he said. "You can call me Cas. And you?"   
"DEAN." Cas looked up at the ceiling.   
"Hello, Dean."   
"HIYA, CAS." 

          From then on, Cas and Dean talk at least once a night. They talk about Dean's brother, Sam-when Cas asks after him, Dean says he's already gone. "JUST ME," Dean writes, and Cas shakes his head.   
"Both of us," he says, and the air smells sweet again. They talk about music and Cas' family, and life in general. It's almost like Dean is just a typical friend, not one who exists in a whole different realm from Cas.   
"Dean," he said one night, hands on the planchette. "How can I talk to you? Without using this thing?"   
"FRIDGE AND MAGNETS?" Dean suggests with a burst of sweet-smelling air that Cas has come to know as Dean's laughter.   
"Very funny, Dean. No," Cas laughed. "If I got you a pad of paper, and a pen...maybe if I talk to Missouri..."   
"MOSELY?" Dean asks. Cas smiled and nodded.   
"She knows you?" The planchette slides over to 'YES.'   
"USED TO BABYSIT. FRIEND OF MOM'S." Cas nodded.   
"I'll try not to gossip about you too much," he laughed, just as a timer Missouri had told him to set so nothing nasty had time to slip through went off. "I've got to go, Dean. I'm sorry. I'll speak with Missouri and talk to you in the morning, okay?"   
"SEE YOU THEN, CAS." Just as Cas is about to remove his hands from the planchette, Dean says one more thing.   
"CAN I SLEEP WITH YOU TONIGHT?" Cas smiled, ear to ear.   
"Of course, Dean. Just don't get handsy." Cinnamon tang hit the air, and Cas removed the planchette and put away the board, curling up on the cot. Just as his eyes slipped closed, there was a rush of warmth beside him, a little sagging weight in the thick tarp of the soft bed. "Goodnight, Dean," Cas murmured, and the wind whistled around him. 

          Cas can feel Dean get stronger, day by day. The ghost closes the built-in wall cabinets after he uses them and puts out candles when Cas forgets (Dean is really big on fire safety, for understandable reasons). He sleeps curled up by Cas, too, enveloping him in the strong, undeniable cider smell. Cas keeps himself pressed up against his warmth, humming softly in his sleep, with Dean wrapped around him protectively. When he'd wake up in the morning, though, Dean would be gone, and he couldn't help but wish that that didn't have to be the case. He talked to Missouri about it a little, since he'd been spending more time around her and her shop. Ruby and Anna, two of the girls in his little posse of the posseless, get their tarot read with Missouri, as it turns out, so Cas picks up that habit, and sometimes they trade stories about Dean or the spirit world in general. Missouri tells him he's got a pretty good gift for contact, and suggests that if he wants to actually see Dean, he should try astral visualisation.   
"It's not for the faint'a heart, now, boy," she said, watering her windowbox of sage and herbs, "but it's the only way you can see Dean physically, and seein' as you've been talkin' about him so much I figure that's som'm you'd like." Cas nodded fervently.  
"Definitely," he agreed eagerly. 

          So Missouri walked him through the process-she sat him in a dark room of his house with white and red candles, for purity of spirit and love, and a simple mirror hung on the wall, and gave him some firm but soothing pieces of final advice.  
"Think about 'im and he'll come to you, sugar," she said, helping him in the nicely padded, large chair she'd given him. Cas nodded, a little unsure. "You remember what I told you to say 'case 'a emergencies?" Cas nodded.   
"Yes ma'm," he agreed. She smiled.   
"You don't gotta be nervous, Cas, honey," she assured him. "Just you think good thoughts and he'll be here for you. Okay?" Cas managed a smile back.  
"Okay," he agreed. Missouri nodded, satisfied with Cas' thoughts, and stepped back, lighting the candles and a little bouquet of sage before turning off the lights and stepping out, shutting the door behind her. Cas sighed, closing his eyes, and leaned back in the chair. 

          "Dean?" he called, clinging to the chair. "Um...Missouri told me I could see you if I did this, and maybe talk to you as well...just come through, if you can, so I can see you in the mirror. I'd love to see you, face to face, if you could just come to me..." All of a sudden, breaking the silence of the room, was a low humming throng of voices as grey shapes started appearing in the mirror, unbeknownst to Cas, who's eyes were still squeezed shut. The voices were a mass of sound, one indistinguishable from the other, Cas hoping and hoping that Dean's was among them. He cracked opened one eye, looking at the sea of faces in the mirror, and called out for Dean again. The other voices faded away, almost one by one, as did the faces, until it was paired down to one or two, until just one face and one gravelly low voice remained. 

Dean.


	2. Chapter 2

         "...Dean?" Cas asked, smiling almost disbelievingly. He wanted to leap from his chair and run to him, to kiss his face and lavish him with love and affection, but Missouri had warned against standing, much less touching the mirror.  
"I'm here, Cas," came a voice, deep and loud and rumbling, echoing as though it came from far away or from inside a bottle. The mirror held a fogged image of a face, a boy with short blond hair and green eyes. The whole image looked watery and sepia toned, Dean's eyes sunken and his face thin and bony, but Cas still found him beautiful. Cas cracked a grin, and Dean's formed one to match.  
"You did all this just to find me?" he asked in disbelief. Cas nodded, grinning.  
"Of course, Dean. I've always wanted to see you, face to face." Cas could've sworn Dean blushed.  
"I know I'm not lookin' so hot..." he said. "I looked better when I was alive, I promise..." Cas shook his head.  
"It's okay, Dean. I think you're absolutely stunning." Dean lowered his eyes and shook his head.  
"Cas, baby, quit," Dean mumbled, ducking his head. Cas chuckled.  
"Shy?" he teased. Dean shook his head.  
"Shut up," he grumbled, scratching the back of his head with one almost skeletal hand. Cas sighed.  
"So, how've you been, darling?" he asked, sitting forward, unimaginably content.  
"Oh, you know. Same ol' same ol'. Nothing really changes in the ether, you know?" Cas laughed and nodded.  
"Of course," he agreed. "I'll talk to Missouri and we'll see if we can get you someplace better, okay? Either all the way here or all the way into the light." Dean nodded.  
"I'll miss you if I have to leave, angel," he admitted earnestly. Cas smiled.  
"I'll miss you too, Dean," he agreed. "But I'll see you before too long, either way, okay?" Dean shook his head firmly.  
"No. You live a good long life, you got it?" he said. "I want you to have a lot to tell me when we finally get together." Cas crossed his legs.  
"I will, Dean," he agreed.  


         "I w~~wis~~I wish~~" his voice crackled like static and his image rippled in and out of visibility.  
"Dean," Cas repeated. "Dean?"  
"Cas, I~~'m lo~~losing the~~" another voice joined his, echoing and distant, and another face in the mirror appeared, young and hollow like Dean's. More and more faces and more and more voices crowded the room, Cas keeping his eyes on Dean.  
"It's okay," Cas soothed. "It's alright. Don't fight it, okay?"  
"Cas~~~there's a l~~t~~there's a light, Cas, I think it's a way out~~" Dean's voice said over the others, loud despite the static crackles.  
"Dean, it's okay," Cas told him. "Just go, alright? You can go. It's okay," he said, eyes starting to fill with tears.  
"Cas, I'm not going~~forget~~you," Dean assured him, pressing a hand to the mirror.  
"I'm not going to forget you either, Dean," Cas assured voice thick and wet-sounding. "Now go. I love you." Dean smiled, his image starting to fade.  
"I l~~love you, Cas," he replied, both of them tearing up by now as Dean started to disintegrate bit by bit. The voices died down soon, and the faces faded, Cas left painfully alone. 

          At 53, Cas got into a bad Cas accident. A black Cadillac ran him off an overpass, and as he lay in the ambulance surrounded by chattering paramedics, a face hovered above him, tan and green-eyed, with short blond hair. Dean, stunning as ever.  
"...Dean," he breathed, reaching shakily up to him.  
"I'm here, Cas," Dean's voice came, soft and soothing. "I'm right here." The world got hazy and Cas could feel his body slow and shut down as Dean guided him away into the light with him, the two going hand in hand.


End file.
